A humane faith
the religious inertia of our belief systems hold a secretive message. it requires translation, like a foreign language. we are each the key to each other’s cipher.
I see now that priorities are like a whirlwind. Quickly things appear, so extremely important in that moment, racing in the cyclical mind. Then, the moment passes. Sometimes those so very important things remain; racing slower or faster. Sometimes they rest, or whip so extreme that they can’t be seen: a sense of doom, an event critical to the focus of now, of life slipping away. Resistance: could we let this moment die? Would it be our fault if it passed without intervention? And the consequences grow into leviathans. So our whirlwind recirculates; many moments settle. Others are back into the sorting vortex. I decide in the next moment which are suspicious, need to be tested with another spin. It mashes into a million tiny voices behind my eyes. I choose one for my focus, and pray I have not ignored my fate.
action is a fancy worldly distraction from my whirlwind
I am not in complete control. Maybe my influence is minuscule, possibly so small as to seem insignificant. The scope of my understanding is as such. Could I be convinced of any more than my narrow vision?
I learn little, continuously, but I still learn. Building towards letting go, building patience on the desperate hope that direction will settle into open palms. The priorities are not for my sorting, so I prioritize being right with the deities, forces, or God who chuckles at my failings, prods my understanding. And it is many, as one, for me. All nametags for the same organism. All signposts for the same home.
I am prickly, stubborn, independent, unyielding. Convinced and convincing. Clever. Too clever for my own good. Not yet wise enough for any good. I do not know, speak as if I do, then advertise my ignorance. Proud of the chaos, the universe hides the carrier of my words. The great power of and. Cursed with gifts, an angelic demon. I allow you, those closest to my madness, to become upset with this contradiction. I am a walking argument, so I must resist the temptation to pander to more neuroses. I have enough of my own. Allow. Allow. Allow.
so I may turn down the Grandiosity volume
deliver the melody of humility so I may rhyme to it
Still, expect less. Fulfill every interaction as final, and believe in the possibility that I may evolve it through the next.
I am not a teacher. I have no lesson plan. I am not a judge. I have no sentences to deliver. I may be an example, if you see me for me. As mistakes that led me to you. And those who understand will re-appear in their bodies or another, as our consciousness.
There is always more work to be done, more service to be a part of. More regressions and plateaus, personalities to discover and discard. You are so many things in this wee human vessel. So packed tight into the cramps and aches of living. But you feel the relief too, and I see it, so we may keep finding it in each other.
They say it gets better. I haven’t seen that. I see us getting better despite the circumstances.
That alone is more valuable than all the desirable mortal results packed into a memory that wishes for a painless death.
at least grant me a pleasant exit, grant me a final moment less damning than my journey there
It is not what comes, or what I must do: plan, attack, will on the universe, demand of you. But how I respond.
With grace. With attention. With care.
With you.
——
Unforced: living outside of the cognitive delusion of ultimate control
Above all, I find it important to make a space in the heart-mind where I, in a natural unforced way, think the way someone else might think, consider that they feel different, at different times, and that all changes too. They might be in pain, chronic unrelenting pain that nobody can see. They may not even be capable of telling me, or anyone. They may not have anyone. But I can feel with that person. Not their pain, not their experience, not some specific event engraved in their trauma codex. Not all that complexity that piles into the person we think we are. I can’t feel that. But we can feel human, together, and find faith in that.
…
Sent in ponderance of 1 John 2:15,
"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
